Thursday, December 31, 2015

There’s one single truth about many long-running shmup franchises: despite all the efforts and sacrifices of brave pilots from all around the world (or galaxy), evil will never really subside. At least this was the rule back when shooters were real and profitable for developers. No matter how successful we were at defeating those hideous monsters there was always an ominous villain lurking in the shadows, waiting to strike again in the inevitable next chapter. Sonic Wings 3 is no exception to the rule, since it follows its predecessor Sonic Wings 2 with that same vibe and a backstory that, well… doesn’t really matter in the end.

Who cares about story anyway? Let them alien baddies come!

What matters is that, for those who thought the second game was too hard for its own good, Sonic Wings 3 – or Aero Fighters 3 in its Western incarnation – is far less punishing and a tad more approachable than Sonic Wings 2. I say that based on how much I had to suffer to loop part 2, whereas part 3 caved in after only two sessions of relatively relaxed play. Blame it on the more easygoing pace, the reduced aggressiveness, the slower bullets and the new assortment of planes and pilots. If you’re a fan of Spanky don’t worry, he’s back with all his lovely dolphiness to cheer you along the way. Unfortunately Baby Bobby must’ve had to go to school or something, since he’s not to be seen anywhere in Sonic Wings 3.

Dat dolphin!

There are ten pilots distributed across five countries (USA, Japan, Russia, Germany and UK), with some new faces joining well-known characters like the stern ninja Hien, everybody's favorite viking Kohful and Rafael's darling dolphin pilot Spanky. They all use two buttons only (fire and bomb), but this time the differences between them are even more pronounced and polarizing, to the point where it practically breaks the game depending on your adopted approach.

The greatest departure from the old formula is a branching feature that allows players to choose the next stage (or stages) in certain levels. Once some bosses are defeated a harmless helicopter-like enemy will materialize: the choice of level depends on which wing of this helicopter you destroy first. Different paths lead to distinct bosses and might result in easier or harder campaigns of eight stages in each loop. By the way, don't expect levels to be exactly the same in the second loop. Not only enemies become more aggressive and start shooting different bullet patterns, but bosses can be completely replaced and bonus levels totally disfigured when compared with what you see in the first loop.

For each choice of pilot the player receives a very particular type of shot as well as bomb. Pick up P items to power up shot, and B items to increase bomb stock. Three Ps will max out firepower, but after a while the plane will revert back to the power it had with only two Ps; then you need to take another P to max out power again. Ps taken before this power-down time window expires (which actually depends on how much you shoot) are converted into 2.000 points each. The only pilots/planes that differ from the norm are Spanky (Russia) and Malcolm (Germany), which have special charge shots activated just by holding and releasing the fire button. Regardless of the ship you choose, chances are you'll need to rethink most of your strategies once you change characters because they all behave differently in firepower, bomb effectivess and power-down times.

I'm playing a credit of Sonic Wings 3 (recorded form a cell phone, hence the hiccups)

Turn English subtitles ON for great justice

For a game that's so old-school in nature, Sonic Wings 3 does incur in serious faults with regards to scoring. The medal/money collecting scheme is back and preserves the idea that the closest to the top of the screen you collect a money icon the highest value it will have. Anything below that will decrease the value down from the maximum of 10.000 points to only 200 points if the medal is taken in the lower half of the screen. However, unbalance raises its ugly head as soon as you reach the first boss, since the money fountains on both bunkers besides the capitol can deliver varying amounts of medals. It's unnerving to get less than 200.000 points prior to the boss fight, when you know sometimes it should give you more than 300.000 points. 300.000 points, by the way, is where you earn your only extra life in the whole game.

Scoring quirks however run deeper than that. With the branching system it's natural to expect some levels to give you more points than others, even though they're not as fun to play depending on the selected character. On top of that, with regular final bosses being replaced for stupid variations all of a sudden your score might be severely compromised (note the homage to Darius if you get to fight the mahjong doll). The greater variety of bonus levels can also lead to areas with a relatively low amount of medals or power-ups. This opens up another can of worms for scoring, especially if you consider Mao Mao and her time-freezing bomb in the bonus level of the two large planes (3rd stage if you take the right route after first boss). Considering that her ship is a weak piece of junk, this scoring advantage does require players to have a lot more skill if they decide to use her and exploit that particular milking technique. And no matter how much I don't like to admit, indeed she is the best choice for score-chasers.

When I started playing the game I was appalled by the music, which I found to be completely atrocious except for the song in the first level. After a while it started sinking in, and now I believe it fits the action quite well. Character interactions remain very humorous throughout the game, and different endings await players who are brave enough to face the game in co-op mode.

My best high score on Sonic Wings 3 is below, playing with the Blazers plane on the MVS difficulty and using a turbo controller for proper autofire (tapping is okay though since firing is achieved in very short bursts). In this run I reached stage 2-4.

Monday, December 14, 2015

The Messerschmitt Bf-109 is a German World War II fighter aircraft designed by Willy Messerschmitt and Robert Lusser during the early to mid-1930s. “Bf” stands for Bayerische Flugzeugwerke, a code issued by the German ministry of aviation to represent the company that originally gave birth to it. Powered by a liquid-cooled inverted-V12 aero engine, it was one of the first truly modern fighters of the era since it included such features as all-metal monocoque construction, a closed canopy and retractable landing gear (source: wikipedia).

Despite its extensive use by the German Luftwaffe prior to and during the Second World War, a more obscure part of the Bf-109 history lies in its participation as one of the six allied planes that took over the mission to fight an alien menace that threatened to destroy the Earth, soon after the war ended. However, you won’t find anything about this hidden piece of military history in libraries or encyclopedias. In order to know about it and actually experience the excitement of shooting down evil alien scum you need to play Strikers 1945.

As all shmup fans know (or should know), this sprite-based war document was unveiled by Japanese company Psikyo across several different gaming platforms in 1995/96. The reason why I’m focusing on the Bf-109, which is actually the only German plane in the game, is that I decided to pilot it while savoring the Playstation version (I had previously used the British Supermarine Spitfire when I tried the Saturn port).

Clearing the first loop with the Shinden
(courtesy of YouTube user あかねちゃん)

A drastic change in artillery is of course expected when a sci-fi theme is added to a military-based shooter. Therefore, all six planes in Strikers 1945 received an upgrade in their firepower that allows them to shoot unlimited ammo (rapid shot), execute unlimited charge shots (shot) and drop limited powerful bombs over the enemy. Their speed, charging time and weapons effectiveness vary, so choosing the plane that best fits your shmup sensitivities is quite important. Differently colored (often in red) and other specific enemies release power-up items and extra bombs. Bombs are self-explanatory, whereas each power-up adds an option whose behavior depends on the plane selected. A maximum of six bombs can be carried at any time, and by collecting four power-ups you achieve a maxed-out aircraft. Surplus items are then converted into extra points.

It’s important to note that options behave differently when you’re just shooting, but at least for me what also determines the choice of plane is the charge shot. In the case of the Bf-109, for example, the available options are grouped together and dropped in place, slowly advancing forwards while shooting a powerful bullet stream. This behavior leads to several possible approaches if you want to deal with stronger enemies while focusing in other areas of the screen or if you just want to quickly dispatch an incoming threat – just remember that you’ll be without options alongside the plane for as long as the charge attack lasts. The Spitfire charge shot, on the other hand, works as a net of extra firepower that forms in front of the plane and moves around with it, an aspect that requires totally different strategies than those of the Bf-109.

Weaker aspects of the Bf-109’s arsenal are its slightly longer charging time and the efficiency of its bomb, which almost exclusively serves as a panic function since it inflicts no real damage on enemies unless you’re pretty close to them.

Regardless of plane choice, players must learn how to deal with rank in Strikers 1945. Basically, the more powered-up you are and the longer you survive the faster enemy bullets will be. To make matters worse, all stages in the first half of the game are randomized, which means you might have to deal with the same stage in its easiest state (1st level) or at its toughest (4th level). One way to deal with rank is to let yourself collide against an enemy, which makes you lose an option and immediately slows down enemy bullets. Given the way bullet spreads are implemented in this game – often in concentrated quick bursts that demand some prior positioning and tap-dodges to be evaded – lowering rank in key areas can definitely be considered a valid gameplay resource.

One of the three random mid-bosses in stage 7

The last main aspect of the gameplay is related to the gold bars released by ground enemies. Their glow varies at a predetermined rate, and to get the best bonus out of them they need to be collected at their maximum glow. Each gold bar is then worth 2.000 points, which is connected to a sound effect that differentiates it from when you take them at lower glowing points (200, 500 and 1.000 points). Naturally the further you advance into the game the harder it becomes to time gold bar collecting for best results, but overall it’s a fun gimmick that works and kinda offsets a bad order for the first four stages. Never mind the slaughter that takes over the whole second loop, where difficulty is amplified to crazy heights and makes survival absolutely more important than gold bar collecting. The only extend comes with 600.000 points.

If visual and audio merits aren’t that great in Strikers 1945, at least the particular style that Psikyo worked to maintain after branching off from Video System tends to grow on you with repeated plays. The Playstation port suffers from very rare faint stutters of slowdown but this isn’t nearly as bad as some online sources point out, and is virtually identical to the disc released for the Sega Saturn at around the same time. The Japanese Playstation game comes with three resolution modes: Original 1 (YOKO), Original 2 (wobbling YOKO) and Arcade (TATE). Plane profiles, configurable controls and a manual save/load function complete the package. Beware of the release for the PS1 in North America, even though it's named Strikers 1945 it's actually the sequel Strikers 1945 II with no TATE mode included.

Since I benefited from a short burst of MAME practice during week 3 of the shmups forum STGT 2015, it can be said that I started playing this version with a good amount of previous Bf-109 knowledge. In my second sitting I got the high score below on Normal (difficulty 5), reaching stage 2-2 for the first time ever.

Wednesday, December 9, 2015

Rarely do I watch cartoons these days. Or animes. However, as I mentioned before some of the TV time in my childhood was spent on Japanese cartoon serials like Groizer X, which was notably the most famous one around here. And even though these kinds of cartoons are no more, we can still quench our nostalgia on video games with a real retro feel such as Supercharged Robot VULKAISER, a cheap and quick outing from Astro Port that embodies a lot of what made these shows so entertaining. Therefore nostalgic buffs take note if you're game for an undemanding passtime.

Supercharged Robot VULKAISER is as bare-bones as it gets, but it comes with a few stills where that fine Japanese anime art of the 1970s jumps off the screen thanks to characters standing in bold positions, their mouths opened as if they're about to shout a war cry. Of course their mission is to protect the Earth from the evil alien scum of the week, but who actually cares about that these days besides kids? The Steam version is so simple that it lacks any options for button mapping or even a pause function (ah, the desire to function as an arcade title!). Just launch the game and watch as it automatically recognizes your current control scheme - my Xbox controller worked perfectly with it, even allowing me to use the D-pad instead of that shitty analog stick.

Players pilot the Vulkaiser, a giant robot that's supposed to restore peace to the Earth and "combines" with four different types of VulFighter enhancing crafts, each one controlled by a different character. Practically you just use one button through the entire game, since any other button in the controller activates the Ω weapon, a bomb that's specific to each VulFighter, is capable of melting enemy bullets and can only be triggered once for every new craft you combine with. An assortment of VulFighters appears twice in every level so that you can switch your current one for another if desired. These can be:

Rocket Kaiser - fires straight missiles; charge shot is an exploding bomb; Ω weapon is a short stream of more powerful missiles.

Thunder Kaiser - fires an open arch of electricity rays; charge shot is a thick laser beam; Ω weapon is a thunder shower that covers the whole screen.

Drill Kaiser - adds a close-range drill to the default shot; charge shot is a powerful drill that's dropped in front of the ship and slowly drifts forward; Ω weapon is a very large and deadly drill.

The act of firing your weapon automatically fills up a charge gauge, and to release the charge shot all you need to do is refrain from shooting from a second. It's a mechanic that works really well, and essentially all you need to do is wait for the graphical/sound cue to release successive charge shots. Charge times and overall weapon effectiveness varies between characters, but the most difficult one to use is definitely the Drill Kaiser, mainly due to the way its charge shot works. It's important to notice that there are different health bars for the Vulkaiser and the selected VulFighter, and that depleting any of them is a definitive loss (in the case of Vulkaiser it's GAME OVER, and for VulFighters you just can't use the lost one anymore). Losing a VulFighter sends the Vulkaiser back to its default condition, including the charge shot that results in the robot's fists being detached in a frontal attack. Pay attention to the hit spot in the character's chest, as pointed out as soon as you start a credit.

When I played this game I remembered a lot of Kiaidan 00. Both titles share the same cool avatar orientation, but Supercharged Robot VULKAISER boasts a less cheap and more straightforward scoring system. There's a simple multiplier scheme that's directly related to how fast you kill successive enemies, which makes Needle Kaiser my favorite VulFighter. At the end of every level all health gauges are converted into bonus points, while speed-killing bosses also grants a chunky amount of extra score. Every time a boss fight starts a counter starts coming down from 99, with the kill tag being multiplied by ×10.000.

Yukimasa-sama does not like the heat

Lighthearted and approachable, VULKAISER does not veer away from the staples of a quickly developed game. Earth stages have backgrounds with cities, forest landscapes and clouds. No obstacles or walls are to be expected. There are lots of enemies and battleships riddled with turrets and little mechas flying around, with the design highlights reserved for bosses. They usually morph into giant robots after being defeated in their rocket or spacecraft forms. Brief comedic dialogue snippets develop the story in the levels themselves, whereas the current VulFighter pilot gives a longer speech at the end of the stage. Using the same VulFighter in multiple levels actually makes the bond between characters stronger, with only one drawback in the gameplay: the more you stick to the same VulFighter the harder the game becomes. Pick a different one to lower the rank.

A last note about rank is that ramming attacks and enemy missiles drain more health from Vulkaiser. Then the most damage comes from red, purple and blue bullets, that's why sometimes the energy you lose when you get hit seems to vary. A fully customizable training option exists, and checking how you're performing is easy because the game saves replays for your best scores automatically across the four difficulty levels. On a last note, Supercharged Robot VULKAISER adopts a 4×3 aspect ratio, so it doesn't fill the whole space in a widescreen setup.

My best 1CC result on Normal is below, mainly having as co-pilot the lovely Kimiko, master of the Needle Kaiser. Click here if you want to know a bit more about the characters.

Saturday, November 21, 2015

And here we come to the behemoth checkpoint-based outer space adventure Pulstar, directly inspired by the golden pillars set by Irem, the company that defined a whole branch of the shooting genre in its R-Type series. Some people consider it a rip-off, others hail it as a homage. I tend to agree with the compliment since Pulstar is different enough to stand on its own even though you can spot many design similarities with both R-Type and R-Type II. The strongest asset that warrants the comparison is the presence of an invincible force pod that protects the ship. This pod, however, is not detachable like in other shooters built upon the same mold, such as Xexex or Ironclad.

Regardless of origins or influences, Pulstar comes off as one of the possible natural developments of Irem’s prime formula. Prerendered graphics intertwine with exquisite pixel art to deliver longer levels and provide an experience that borders the epic. I’m also very fond of the music, which opens with breezy, uplifting themes and evolves to ethereally ominous, truly dark pieces by the time you reach the last stages. I’d also say Pulstar is one of the most beautiful shooters of its generation, if only for the eye candy and the impressive scope of its design. But hey, it’s not without faults, and that’s the reason why it doesn’t top the finesse of its forefather.

Front line on the Earth

A lovely animated intro shows the heroine of the game departing for battle. As the most basic input, button A is used to fire. Firing can be accomplished by either tapping or charging, both actions gauged by the cannon meter positioned at the bottom of the screen. Hold down the button until the meter is full to the right and release it to fire a powerful blast (partial charges are possible at the expense of power). Likewise, the quicker you tap the button the more you fill up the left side of the power meter, a feature that adds almost nothing of real use to the gameplay (keep reading). Little robots act as carriers for power-up items, which come labeled in roman letters and greatly affect gameplay.

Essentially, taking any of the five available weapon types creates the pod at the nose of the ship. The first pod is small and offers little protection, but as soon as the second power-up is taken it grows to its normal size. Weapons types consist of N (wave shot), P (bouncing lasers), T (trailing homing lasers), R (straight laser) and F (electrical shield, damages by contact but doesn’t stop bullets). The only weapon that emphasizes tapping instead of charge shots is F, since the purple electrical shield is only generated and held at its nominal radius if you keep the tapping gauge full (charge shots still work but without any extra firepower). Now this is where Pulstar starts to lose some of its shiny glow: due to how the developer has shaded the weapon items it’s impossible to differentiate an F from a P. For a long time I wondered why some Ps gave me lasers and others gave me the purple shield. Thankfully there are only a few Fs throughout the game so it’s easy to avoid them if you want.

Remaining items consist of S (speed-up), C (charge speeder) and I ("bits" that hover above and below the ship and grant a little extra directional firepower). Cs are extremely important to kill bosses and tricky enemies faster. Bits are free-aiming by default, but to lock them in place all you have to do is press button B. However, beware not to do this while you're pressing A because A + B sacrifices the force pod in a panic attack whose effect depends on the weapon you're using. This works as a last resort on the face of imminent death since you'll be invincible as the pod detaches and explodes in front of the ship. I find this feature particularly useless, and the only
times I did it were either when I was learning the game or when I pressed the
button by accident.

The good news about the S pick-up is that the maximum speed is perfectly manageable – I’d even say necessary – so you don’t need to avoid any S while playing. Additionally, the hovering bits of Pulstar are also capable of blocking regular bullets, unlike in R-Type! As you can see, a ship equipped with a force pod and two bits has its frontal hull very well protected. Handling this protection is crucial for survival in the second half of the game, regardless of the weapon you decide to use. Speaking of items, score chasers must be aware that every single one is worth a few points. Note that simple score techniques such as checkpoint exploitation must be done very carefully because the stage bonus of 50.000 points is reduced the more you die in a level. Die once and get 30.000 points, die twice or more and get only 10.000 points. The only stage where checkpoint abuse might be a good idea is the last one, but be warned that all recoveries at that point in the game are extremely tough.

Pulstar intro and attract mode
(courtesy of YouTube user adventkamen)

While fairly amusing from start to finish, Pulstar has a few quirks that only become apparent when you spend more time with the game. Slowdown, for example, is a constant companion that has its pros and cons. It definitely helps during busy sections that demand heavy crowd control, but on the other hand it factors into the numbness that takes over the first half of the game. No matter how awesome the opening to the 3rd stage is – with flaming arches crossing the screen while lovely backgrounds scroll by and enemies approach from both sides – the battle against the huge organic battleship almost brings the game to a halt. Half the 4th stage being the destruction of another large spaceship doesn’t help either, which in the long run hurts the flow of the game to the point where it will take a greater deal of shmupping love to persevere into the following trickier levels.

In between the several throwbacks to R-Type in stages 5 and 6 (robot showers, dismantling snakes, blocky creatures travelling within a tight maze) and the memorization nightmare of the last stage, the developer has also included minor homages to Gradius (the indestructible spider) and Darius (the giant moon surfaces of stage 7). I absolutely love it when the screen shakes as if the very fabric of reality is being torn by the destruction brought about by the player, like in the demise of the spaceship in stage 4 or the waterfall passage in stage 5. As a side curiosity, the abundance of phallic imagery in Pulstar is remarkably explicit. The tip of the organic battleship, the weak spot of the 7th boss and the series of pink cocks trying to crush you in the last stage easily top anything included in other seriously themed shooters like R-Type II and Wings of Wor.

On the default difficulty (4) the extend routine is 300.000 points for the first extra life, then successive extends at every 200.000 points. Milking key enemies and bosses is possible, but this doesn’t really add much in the final score. There are mysterious techniques to get more points on the last boss, but I haven’t bothered with those because they involve suiciding.

My 1CC score is below, playing on difficulty 4. Note: developer Aicom morphed with a branch of SNK into Yumekobo, the company that made Blazing Star years later. If only on aesthetics, Blazing Star is considered by many as the spiritual successor to Pulstar.

Monday, November 2, 2015

It must have been great to be a fan of Sega back in the 80s if you were a regular arcadegoer. There were many companies working their way up in the development of their games and series regardless of inherent success or critics approval, but Sega was truly unique in how they were able to innovate and create completely fresh titles. Titles inspired by previous efforts, it's true, but nonetheless the most famous Sega arcade games were an instant invitation to awesomeness. Fantasy Zone, for example, wasn't like anything that came before it. The core of the gameplay relates to Defender, but it goes beyond the horizontal shooter formula and delivers a completely unexpected blast of pure fun.

Today it's easy to dismiss Fantasy Zone as a foolish or childish little title without much of an emphasis on shooting or action. Most of the designs for enemies and levels comes off as fluffly, soft, not worthy of one's attention when there are so many shooters out there that fill the screen with thick lasers and insurmountable bullet curtains. All it takes, however, is one credit. One single credit, and the odds are that you'll be hooked right there and then. This game sucks you into it like quicksand, and for a while all you might think about is destroying all those generators and beating those colorful bosses while collecting shiny gold coins.

"Don't mess with me or I'll drop a 16t on your head!"

An oval ship called Opa-Opa is the hero of the game. He fires a main shot and drops ground bombs. The main objective in each level is to take down all generators that spawn enemies, facing the stage boss right afterwards. It's possible to fly right/left and to control the scrolling speed by doing it (you can even stop the scrolling by "landing"). Since these levels work as vertical cylinders, you'll eventually come back to the starting point if you keep flying in the same direction. A small map in the lower part of the screen shows the locations of the ten generators in a level and which ones have already been destroyed. When the last generator goes down remaining enemies try to flee and the music changes to announce the boss entry. This is the only moment (boss fights 1 to 7) where Opa-Opa will be locked facing the right side of the screen.

The first thing you want to do as soon as the Shop red balloon appears is touch it and buy the necessary upgrades to survive. In order to buy you need money, which comes from the coins you collect from defeated enemies. Mandatory items to get include one of the speed-up upgrades and twin missiles. These particular items are permanent and only disappear when you die, while most of the others last only for 20 seconds, as indicated by the status bar on the top right of the screen. Part of the learning fun comes from testing these upgrades and deciding when it's better to use the temporary ones. However, one can always try to play the game without them or without ever entering the shop, a special challenge certainly not designed for the weak. And if you're stuffed with items you might get a Sel balloon instead of the shop, an alternative that allows you only to select between your inventory of items.

Attention to detail is one of the reasons I like Fantasy Zone so much. Each enemy has its particular behavior, which is also heavily randomized by the game itself and your movement as you seek those evil generators. Besides, each generator has its own damage indicator and its own particular way of "breeding". All bosses have specific behaviors and ways of attack, in one of the most diverse and fun boss galleries I've ever seen in any horizontal shmup. The last stage is different in that you need to defeat all previous
bosses again before facing a giant version of yourself, but note that boss rematches
are harder and your firepower isn't locked to the right anymore.

Fantasy Zone's unforgettable soundtrack is tailor-made to match the pastel colors, helping to breath
an extraordinary amount of lighthearted ambience into the game design.
Be aware though that behind this fluffiness lies a rather intricate
challenge. Looking back when I first tried the game, I was briefly shocked upon dying my first death. The death animation of this game is cruel: there's a split-second freeze and Opa-Opa explodes in a burst of blue particles (other games do this quick-freeze as well, e.g. Under Defeat). As usual, avoiding death requires practice, but given the random nature of the game I'd say it also requires a greater deal of focus. More often than not I saw great credits go down the drain because I got sloppy. Dying against certain bosses can be really bad, since that's the only point in a stage where the Shop will not appear at all. Shops appear every time you die during the level, so that you can at least recover your speed right away...

Colors galore!
(courtesy of YouTube user Kenbotan)

It's possible to buy extra lives in the shop, but each further one will cost more (5K, 20K, 50K, 100K). Buy the way, all items and weapons inflate in price the more you purchase them. Using the money to survive and recover from losses is perfectly fine, but it isn't good at all if you're trying to play for high scores. These are only applicable if you complete the game because everything you have in reserve is converted into a BIG bonus. Each life is worth one million points, while the amount of gold gets multiplied by 10. Therefore the more you spend and the more you die the less you get as a reward in the end.

What I found kinda puzzling is that the game lets you input your initials for a high score before the second loop starts, registering another score when you die in the second loop. Another tricky aspect of the loop is that since your lives and money are converted into bonuses you'll start the second round with no lives in reserve.

The Saturn port of Fantasy Zone released as part of the Sega Ages collection is arcade-perfect. It was the first one to offer the arcade experience at home, but the version for the Playstation 2 is also a good alternative. The Saturn game allows lots of tweaks, most of them unlocked with a few simple tricks. The only one that mattered for me is rapid fire, and to unlock it all you have to do is play a token credit while holding down the fire button: the result is that you can then choose between ten options for "auto rapid". The player can also record, load and save replays to a back-up cartridge with the Trace function, along with a few rearranged versions of the soundtrack including a variation with female vocals for the song of the first stage (unfortunately the rearranged music can't be selected for regular runs). It's also possible to choose betwen Japan or US versions of the game - the difference is that the US version has less enemies and is therefore easier. Each version comes with its own high score boards, which are properly saved for great justice.

My gameplay strategy was very aggressive. Initial power-ups I purchased were the jet engine ($1.000) and the twin bombs ($100). Then I would get the laser beam in stage 3 (much stronger than the wide beam), another laser beam in stage 5, wide shots in stages 6 and 7 (best temporary weapon in the game), one of those lovely 16t heavy bombs to care care of all turrets from KobaBeach (3rd boss) in the boss rush and wide shot again against Ida 2 (7th boss) if I end up dying. For the final boss I'd reserve at least two 16t heavy bombs. In the highest score below I played the Japan version on Normal/Medium, ending the credit in stage 2-3 (round 11) with auto rapid set to 10 shots/second.

Saturday, October 31, 2015

Returning my attention back to Gradius II after being exposed to Gradius III has a few clear advantages, such as putting its difficulty into the correct perspective within the series. It felt much easier this time around when compared to the occasion I played Gradius IIon the Sega Saturn. Sure, by then I had approached the game in completely dire conditions – or, to put it in other words, in truly arcade-like fashion (bar the arcade cabinet, of course). It was just me and the game, no MAME save states, checkpoints in final levels learned the hard way. The good news is that I learned a lot from doing it, something that helped me cope with the higher stakes of the sequels.

Savoring the second chapter again on the Playstation felt like going home. The Gradius Deluxe Pack on Sony’s 32-bit console is exactly the same as the homonymous compilation released for the Sega Saturn, presenting both Gradius and Gradius II in a neat package that brings the arcade experience home. Going from the first game directly into the sequel is enough for anyone to understand the remarkable leap in terms of quality that Konami was able to come up with, and that’s another reason why this particular disc is so precious for those willing to have a piece of arcade shooting history in their collections.

An outcast from Salamander

Stepping into the world of Gradius II should be easy if you enjoyed the first game in the series. By doing so you’ll be immersed in an adventure that takes what made Gradius so classy and beefs it up with several upgrades, from graphics to sound, from weapons to difficulty. Backgrounds are much more than star-filled horizons, with an increased weapon variety that smartly incorporates what was done on the spin-off Salamander series. It’s here that some Gradius staples appear for the first time, such as the high speed stage, the boss rush (with several bosses from Salamander) and the indestructible mechanical beast in the last stage.

Never mind the checkpoints. Don’t even get angry at the checkpoints. Accept their inevitability as part of the experience and watch as the anger factor fades accordingly. Knowing that with each death you’re forced to restart a section with a crawling spaceship can be cruel, but it’s also a great motivator for you to refine your strategy to the standards required by the game. Managing power-up capsules and the upgrade process goes hand in hand with terrain navigation and macro dodging. I prefer to have only two buttons configured, one with rapid fire for both shot and missiles and another for power-up activation (× and R1, respectively), but it’s also possible to have separate buttons without any autofire function.

Each power-up capsule taken lights up one slot in the weapon array. Select the desired upgrade by pushing the upgrade button. Behold as the Vic Viper abandons its sluggish navigating capability with the speed-up upgrade, acquires an excellent destruction aid with missiles and increases its firepower with the glowing orbs known as options. Get lasers or ripple lasers and double (45º) or tailgun shot upgrades. And increase the hull’s endurance with the shield (frontal protection against a good number of hits) or the force field (capable of withstanding damage from three bullets). Players must choose between four weapon configurations and select one of the shielding alternatives.

All bosses from Gradius II
(courtesy of YouTube user Galaxia Shadow)

What changed from my previous experience with Gradius IIon the Saturn and this round on the Playstation? As a starting point, I adopted two speed-ups instead of only one. Being faster demanded more precise maneuvering, but I now think it’s better in the long run. I went with ship type 3 for the ripple lasers, not exactly because they’re stronger or anything but because they’re different. And this time around I also caved in and used MAME to save-state the high speed level and the last stage, which made practicing a lot less stressful. Compared to the first chapter, it's visibly harder to recover from death in Gradius II, especially on the third (crystals) and the last (fortress) levels. The extend routine is 20.000 points for the first one, with all further extra lives gained at every 150.000 points.

The tweaks that matter here are button mapping (mentioned above) and the ability to turn off the emulated arcade slowdown (set wait control to OFF). Choosing between Arcade and Full screen ratio feels pointless since it's just a matter of minor image cramping on the sides of the screen. High score saving is available, but the port would shine even more if it had an option to start directly on the second loop (if you managed to complete the game, at least).

As far as arcade chapters are concerned, I know people who think this entry is the best in the series. I can surely relate to that since Gradius II still stands as a fun blaster despite the checkpoints. I was able to reach stage 2-1 in the highest score below, playing with ship type 3, force field and wait control OFF.

Tuesday, October 27, 2015

As usual, Pixelosity came out in 2011 amidst a glut of new indie games that poured into the online system of the Xbox 360. A horizontal shooter of simplistic design, it didn’t pretend to offer anything more than a take on what a blocky Atari 2600 shmup would look like had it been given more memory and processing horsepower. The in-your-face mechanics and the wave-after-wave scheme brings it close to a caravan styled shooter, one that entices and captivates but ultimately ends in a lower tone, failing to live up to its sympathetic concept.

Everything in the game is big, represented in strong, flat colors that change every now and then. Your ship is a single pointy vessel that leaves behind a short rainbow trail and fires a single stream of blocky bullets against equally blocky enemy ships. At first these enemies are shy at shooting back at you, an aspect of the gameplay that gets progressively reversed as you reach the final objective of this abstract romp, which is beating wave/stage number 7. Collisions distribute showers of blocky sparks all around the screen, creating a visual feast that tends to get straining on the eyes after a while. Pixelosity is definitely an apt title.

It looks much better when it's moving

There’s not much in the way of tweaks in the game, much like most of the XBLIG offerings. Choose your approach to music, sound effects and controller vibration and off you go (by approach I mean ON and OFF). Shoot with button A and travel inside an endless horizontal tunnel blasting opponents that come in straight lines and have little in the way of variation, be it in the enemy gallery or in their limited attack range. You won’t see walls, aleatory movement patterns, fancy graphic effects, aggressive spread patterns or even proper bosses. What little there is of change is in the randomness of enemy spawning position and formations (in-line, lateral, mixed) and in the sparse appearance of spinning drones or larger/stronger versions of regular zakos. These often resemble aliens from Space Invaders.

Items are dropped at random by some enemies or waves and have the following meanings:

(x) Double bullets? Double fun!: a temporary upgrade that adds two extra streams of bullets that give a slight spread nature to the default weapon;

(=) Bullet overdrive!: temporary upgrade for increased rate of fire;

(○) Somebody set up us the bomb: a bomb that wipes all on-screen enemies (no bullets) when you press the × button; if you take a different item you’ll lose it, so bomb away if you’re about to do so.

All items are mutually exclusive, so you can’t have a spread gun with increased firing rate or keep a bomb while having the spread gun. Note that the current active item is shown beside the life counter, and that the only one that doesn’t fade is the bomb since it can be used any time at the player’s mercy. Whenever a certain amount of enemies in a stage is destroyed you enter a brief bonus area with opponents that don’t shoot, and if you kill them all an extra life is awarded (max life count is 5 though). Pulling this off during the first couple of levels is easy, after that it becomes a lot more difficult due to the lack of firepower. This is also where the game balance starts to suffer.

The fun in Pixelosity is at its best when you’re dodging series of bullets at different heights, regardless of their speed. There’s genuine rush to the twitchy action, never mind the enemies that go by because you can’t handle them all. Unfortunately, halfway into the game it becomes clear that lines and lines of aggressive zakos shooting almost non-stop cannot be fully destroyed without incurring in inadmissible frontal risk. Later on the game speeds down a little with slower bullets but much higher enemy density, giving you a near-danmaku feeling. And then it’s back to the underpowered fight before the end, which cuts the game abruptly as if you had a game over. One of the most unsatisfying ways I’ve ever seen of finishing a credit, honestly.

Having some quick fun with Pixelosity
(courtesy of YouTube user and developer Valeri Tagala)

In between the slow start, the cool middle stuffing and the brisk ending lies a simple but effective scoring system: the more you kill the higher you score; die and watch the combo counter and the scoring possibilities restart from zero. It’s easy to notice how to extract the most out of this system, even if luck plays a little role in the overall experience. During the game’s second half, for example, bombs disappear completely. So much for the Zero Wing reference, I guess. Sometimes a little balloon with an X appears above the ship, and while it seems to have a relation to the bomb item it actually doesn’t. Dying happens with little flair, with the same animation used in regular pixelly explosions and no breathing room at all in the next life. The result can be several deaths in a row if you’re not focused enough.

The game crashed on me a few times and sent me back to the console’s dashboard, but thankfully these bugs only happened at the end of a credit with scores being duly preserved. If you watch the separate credits you’ll see the developer recommends using the Konami code in the game - the only thing it does is change the sprite of the ship to that of a cat. A blocky cat. Ever wanted to play a shmup as a cat leaving behind a rainbow trail? Then Pixelosity is for you.

Tuesday, October 20, 2015

In Japan, the name of the game is Winds of Thunder. All other releases for different regions or consoles, including the Turbografx-CD in the West, came out as Lords of Thunder, which makes more sense in regards to the story involving a knight equipped with a magic sword and fighting hordes of hell commanded by fiendish leaders – or lords, if we want to have them in a classier fantasy designation. Almost like an RPG turned into a shooter, what we have here is an amusing adventure packed with tight action and great music, a roaring testimony to the quality of CD based games from the 16-bit generation.

Despite being frequently associated with Gate of Thunder, there is no relation whatsoever between that game and this one. In fact they couldn’t be more different, since one is a classic sci-fi spaceship shooter and the other a fireworks display of medieval flying action. They do share the same development team, but that’s about it as far as similarities go. Winds of Thunder is also more original and must have felt completely fresh back in 1993, unlike Gate of Thunder and its striking resemblance to Thunder Force III. A lengthy animated intro and a few cut scenes complete the package, adding greatly to the fantasy theme of Winds of Thunder.

Animated intro and attract mode in Winds of Thunder
(courtesy of YouTube user and developer Kylemeister13)

For each of the selectable continents/stages the player must choose one out of four magical armors. Each armor comes with a different color and endows the brave knight with a specific weapon whose power and effectiveness varies: fire (spread shot → whipping flames), water (straight shot → two-way shot), wind (bolt shot → forward/diagonal bolts) and earth (thin shot with two-way exploding bombs). Contrary to popular belief, stages and weapons are not related in any way when you think about the elemental names of the armors, as in "selecting the fire armor to play the water or ice levels". In the end it’s all just a matter of choosing the weapons you feel more comfortable with. Button II shoots while button I triggers a bomb attack that changes according to the selected armor.

As you destroy enemies, several types of crystals will emerge and vanish after a while if you don’t pick them up. Blue and gold crystals add to the crystal count (5 and 10 points, respectively) that can be used to buy items and upgrades in the shop after selecting the armor. Magic gems add to the upgrade gauge above the life meter, thus determining the power of the weapon: those of the blue type add a single upgrade point, whereas the more rare red type provides a bulkier upgrade. In total there are two power levels beyond the default, each one requiring a certain amount of upgrade points to be reached. Finally, every once in a while a specific enemy will leave behind a heart that increases the amount of health. By all means try to keep this health bar in good shape, because once it depletes the game is sadly over.

Whenever you stand close enough to an enemy the regular shot will be replaced by a sword blow of short reach. This special melee attack is relatively strong, but beware of using it in crowded places (lost firepower from shooting) or against moving enemies (it’s easy to get hit). By getting hit you lose a portion of health, and most of the time this will also be followed by a downgrade of a full level in the weapon power. This means that in certain areas getting hit twice or three times in a row can be disastrous, since you’ll be left with low life and a weak, basic weapon. In order to prevent such situations the only real remedy is practice, but spending crystals in the shop can also help with that. It’s possible to buy varying amounts of health, extra firepower, bombs, shields and a precious resurrection potion that grants you a full life meter after you lose the initial one. These last three items, as well as continues (no need if you’re aiming for the 1CC), are the only ones that cannot be found in any way during the actual gameplay.

When you think about horizontal shooters it’s easy to realize that Winds of Thunder packs all the elements that make a shmupper’s heart tick in the right way. Colorful graphics, a rocking soundtrack full of guitar and bass, decent animation (the knight can even “walk” on flat surfaces), all sorts of environmental hazards, varying scrolling speeds, reasonable survival/challenge ratio, large bosses. Some of these bosses are quite demanding by the way, with tricky weak spots and the need for a good amount of dodging. The Auzal boss, for instance, will crush unaware players who’re not too fond of moving around. Exploding totems and moving spikes can be deadly as you reach the final stretch of the game, while a poorly selected armor might represent the difference between a relatively comfortable challenge and extremely dire conditions.

The lord of the Bosque continent

In the batch of influences that can be noticed here I definitely see hints of Rabio Lepus (close-range sword attack), Insector X (earth weapon, down to the sound effects) and Forgotten Worlds (boss entries, the shop gimmick and some of its items). Another aspect inherited from the latter is the conversion of leftover crystals in points as you beat the last boss. The amount collected will be multiplied by ×100, so the maximum possible bonus you can get is one million points for 10.000 crystals. Unfortunately the crystal counter is capped at this value, when in fact you could collect much more than that. Therefore there’s plenty of room to buy stuff in the shop without sacrificing this final bonus.

Besides the reward from crystals, another source of extra points is the collection of upgrade items (magic gems) when the power bar is completely full. Each one is worth 500 points, a neat compensation and nice motivator for flawless play. Quite simple and fun, something lots of shooters seem to take for granted.

Winds of Thunder is often compared to the port released for the Sega CD two years later. I’ll refrain from drawing any conclusions until I try the Sega CD version, which I expect to do soon. In the PC Engine CD my choice of armor was the earth type, for its sheer power and great side coverage (after a few credits I decided to use it exclusively). You can try to pause as soon as the final boss goes down to take a look at the score, but if you lose the aftermath explosion don't worry. Just let the end credits scroll and wait for the attract mode to check your high score. Below is my final 1CC result:

Tuesday, October 13, 2015

Ever since Namco released Dragon Spirit in the arcades back in 1987, several adaptations had been made for the most diverse platforms. However, the first version to have real potential to provide the arcade experience at home is the one included in the Namco Museum Vol. 5 compilation, which graced the Playstation library ten years later (I wonder why Namco gave absolutely no love to the Sega Saturn like Capcom did with their Capcom Generation series, but alas). On its own this port is a very good one, but the fact that it offers a TATE option is reason alone to make it the preferred version for players who are able to turn their TVs/monitors on their sides. As far as I know none of the most recent compilations released for newer platforms has TATE.

In order to play the game all you need to use are two buttons, used in the same manner as in the classic Xevious. The first button makes the dragon spit fire bullets/streams, the second one makes him drop blue goo on the ground. This second attack takes effect at a predetermined distance and is used to destroy ground enemies and targets. Striking a balance between the two types of attacks is essential if you want to succeed at the mission of rescuing a beautiful girl from the evil final boss after being turned into a dragon by a magic sword.

A little note before moving on: this port of Dragon Spirit comes with the OLD and the NEW variations of the game. The OLD version has slightly different stage layouts and doesn't allow stage selection, but the reason why it's largely ignored by the gaming community is the slower speed of the dragon (easier to notice when you move downwards). Once again I played the NEW version, having already cleared it on the Playstation 2 a few years ago on the Namco Museum 50th Anniversary.

Ancient and mythological creatures like dinosaurs, griffons, firebirds, phoenixes and mammoths are just part of what lies ahead of you across nive levels of increasing difficulty. Animation is basic but gets the job done, and the music is pure bliss for those who enjoy fantasy themes. The item collection that provides upgrades to the dragon's firepower is considerably vast, and knowing how each item works often plays a strong role between life and death. It's not always a good idea, for instance, to max out your firepower, since the dragon's nose aquires a very deceiving dead zone despite the extreme power of flame weapon. That can be deadly against speedier enemies (marsh stage) and close-range attacks (inside the castle).

Whenever ground eggs or blinking enemies are hit an orb will float out of them. 90% of the time they will wander inside the screen for you to take, the 10% remaining will randomly fly away. Orange orbs add points to the firepower gauge, and three of them upgrade the main shot into more powerful forms (first fireballs and then the almighty flame). Each blue orb grows an extra head on the dragon, but note that with three heads (max) your hitbox also increases, thus making it harder to move around. All other types of items are less frequent but not less important, such as: shrink (single-headed tiny dragon), spread shot (white dragon), temporary homing/exploding shot (gold dragon), full flame power (green dragon), earthquake (all ground targets are destroyed as they enter the screen), temporary invincibility, diamonds (1.000 points), gold (10.000 points), improved eyesight (in stage 8 only), dragon egg (collect 3 to win an extra life) and complete power down (black orb).

Each life in Dragon Spirit allows the player to get hit once before dying from the next enemy blow. Don't expect to recover any lost "health", it's impossible. Every time you get hit without dying you lose one power level and one head (if you happen to have at least two heads, that is), however deaths do not deplete your reserve in the firepower gauge or the collected dragon eggs. Considering that the scoring system is pretty basic, prone to randomness and only exploitable if you decide to die in particularly long and tricky checkpoints (ice level, second part of the castle), survival often takes a larger role in the long run. Many players refrain from using three-headed dragons, or even completely upgrading the main weapon.

Other important gameplay aspects for survival involve the permanent effects of some items, such as the spread shot. It completely overrides the regular weapon, and the only way to revert it back to normal is by taking the exploding/homing shot (once it ends the dragon gets back to normal), the full flame orb or the black item (sends you back to the default dragon). By the way, the closer you get to the final stage the more you notice the black item isn't as bad as it seems, plus it's hard to evade from it inside the busier parts of the castle. Remember that there are two score-based extends, granted with 100.000 and 200.000 points.

Configuring controller inputs

Instead of focusing on pure or heavy dodging, Dragon Spirit definitely requires more effort on memorization and careful placement. It alternates between wide open environments and purely claustrophobic sections where tiny dragons rule (get a blue orb to "grow" back to the normal size). Diversity is the norm in the game, with all stages boasting very specific designs and unique enemies with little repetition throughout.

The Namco Museum Vol. 5 disc opens with a cheesy animated intro that reflects everything about the feeble infatuation for 3D that plagued the 32-bit generation. The museum option that brings lots of information about the games in the collection is a chore to navigate, but thankfully the options for the games themselves offer no complication at all: just press Δ at the start screen. Regarding Dragon Spirit, besides setting up TATE (clockwise only, which is rather unusual) you can also adjust screen position, select between OLD or NEW version, mess with the original arcade DIP-switches and turn off continues/pause/sound for the attract mode. Without pausing you won't be able to reset the game though (while paused, press Δ to call the reset function). Exiting the game is required if you want to save high scores and settings.

The only thing that's missing in this port of Dragon Spirit is an autofire option, so I recommend
getting a turbo controller if you don't want to suffer severe wrist
damage. I used one, and below is my final 1CC score (NEW version, Normal difficulty). I guess now I'm ready to try the sequel Dragon Saber, which has an equally nice port on the Playstation included in the Namco Museum Encore disc.

Wednesday, September 30, 2015

I had been taking the Nintendo 3DS with me in my trips for light diversion purposes, but this last time I decided to seriously face the challenge proposed by European developer Shin’en in Nanostray. And so I cracked the seal in my list of beaten shmups for a Nintendo handheld console. Things that definitely lured me into the game include the colorful and detailed graphics, the cool soundtrack and the opportunity to play another vertical shooter with the slightly tilted perspective that reminds me of Silpheed and Raystorm. Getting used to the dual screen was a little strange at first, but thankfully the interaction with the lower screen is minimal even though it could’ve been better.

Nanostray is purity incarnated for those who can’t stand text or too many cinemas in their video games but love some quick eye candy. It boots up fast and offers just the right amount of animation sequences as the spaceship goes from one mission to the next. Of all game modes available, the one to be played as an arcade adventure is the option named “Adventure” (duh). Each stage is a planet that must be visited and purified of evil alien scum, with the player being allowed to choose the order of the first three stages. After they’re done it’s once again possible to tackle the next three in any order. Only the final two levels must be played one after the other, as the ship enters a fortified enemy base with lots of corridors and giant doorways. Each level beaten in this mode is unlocked in the “Arcade” option, where the player is encouraged to score attack each planet separately.

“Challenge” and “Multiplayer” options complete the package. The first one has several different requirements that must be fulfilled when playing specific levels, which in turn unlock related extras in the gallery section.

Mitsurin Jungle

Weapons come in four flavors switchable on the fly by touching their symbols in the lower screen: forward pulse shot (a soft burst of blue energy), two-way side shot (no frontal attack at all), seeker (has mild bending ability) and lightning (electricity discharge that latches onto enemies). Weapons are fired with button A, bombs are triggered with X and weapon boost is activated with B, with no option to remap buttons. As long as there is enough energy in the weapon gauge, this boost amplifies the power of the weapon in the following ways: pulse shot turns into a killer laser beam, side shot efficiency is heavily increased, seeker fires additional bursts with better homing function and lightning creates a cloud of electricity that hits everything within a short radius.

Recharging the weapon gauge is done by collecting blue coins released whenever you kill complete waves of small enemies. One coin is sufficient to refill the whole gauge. Other enemies might leave behind gold coins worth 500 points each (tip: whenever you hold button R all coins are automatically sucked into the ship). A health bar allows the ship to take some hits before blowing up. It does not, however, protects it against collisions, which are fatal and mean instant death. Every credit starts with five lives and there are absolutely no health recovery items or extends of any kind. As for bombs, they work in standard classic shmup fashion by inflicting lots of damage and rendering the ship invincible for a little while.

There is absolutely nothing wrong with the core gameplay of Nanostray. In fact, it’s actually decent fun only marred by a few problems such as the awkward weapon selection scheme and the recognition of boundaries – ramming into enemy ship hulls or touching unsafe areas close to borders is very common as you start to play, but this is eventually ironed out with memorization. Most of the fun comes from boosting weapons in screens filled with enemies, as well as sucking all those coins with button R. The obvious question in this case is why this sucking ability wasn’t implemented by default into the game, and the answer unfortunately points to an aspect that’s bound to negatively hit the fun factor. This aspect is the scoring system.

Official trailer for Nanostray
(courtesy of YouTube user and developer ShinenGames)

In order to score higher in Nanostray you need to refrain from using the weapon boost attacks, since each successive wave you destroy without draining the boost gauge is worth more points. You also can’t use the coin sucking function, otherwise you’ll reduce the so-called “valor” bonus that’s shown at the end of the level. Note that the valor bonus is also reduced whenever you’re shooting aimlessly without hitting anything. All things considered, what I just put in this paragraph is enough to turn the game into a totally wooden experience that excludes almost everything that’s cool about it. Killing the larger enemies, for instance, becomes a chore because it’s very hard to do it without recurring to a weapon boost or letting precious waves go by. Even if a specific weapon is theoretically capable of destroying the thing before it leaves the screen, switching weapon types on the fly without shifting your focus from the action is too risky and requires ninja training.

I can cope with the small weird quirks of Nanostray’s gameplay, such as being denied the blue coin if I destroy waves too fast (as they’re entering the screen) or dealing with the unreliable nature of the seeker weapon boost (the energy burst sometimes goes out in the wrong way and totally misses what you should be targeting). However, going through this visual feast of lasers, bullets and handheld eye candy while worrying about collecting all coins manually and switching weapons too often is just painful. All my weapon switches were done at the start of a level or at very specific points in the game, as in when the quick waves overlap the large battleships in the Sunahara Desert stage (seeker → lightning). Some boss fights also require a little weapon switching to be won faster, but these are often possible in between transitions without enemy bullets being fired at you.

Besides the elusive valor bonus, other bonuses to be collected at the end of the level consist of extra points for the number of destroyed waves, ship stock and unused bombs. Adventure mode allows three save slots and each successive difficulty (Normal, Advanced, Expert) decreases the amount of resources while increasing the damage taken by the ship without making the gameplay actually any different. Your overall performance is ranked from F to S++, while scores obtained in Arcade mode – which is locked at the Advanced difficulty – can be filed at the game’s website via a code.

I played in Normal and valued fun instead of scoring, so I was almost always with button R pressed and wreaking havoc with the boost functions. The final result is in the picture below (don't press any button on this screen or you'll be sent into the final credits/animation and never see your final score again). Note: Nanostray is the spiritual successor to Iridion II for the Game Boy Advance, and the first in a series of shooters with the “nano” prefix in the title, which also includes the sequel Nanostray 2 for the Nintendo DS and the Nano Assault arena shooters developed for the Nintendo 3DS.

Monday, September 28, 2015

Whenever I need to write about games like Robodemons I can't help but feel I should apologize to those who read this blog (huh... did I ever?). I don't refer to the fact that some people wouldn't consider it an eligible title for something shmup-related, since we're talking about a hybrid. After all, I welcome all sorts of hybrids here if the shmup part in them is of substantial significance. My apologizing is actually related to the fact that Robodemons is such a bad game it hurts. But then again, those familiar with the history of NES unlicensed material know very well what to expect from Color Dreams, the rogue company behind this atrocious mix of shooting and action.

Evil demon king Kull has created a machine that transplants the souls of demons into the bodies of robots. As the brave hero, you will be descending into seven levels of unspeakable horrors in your mission to defeat Kull, kinda like in Dante's Divine Comedy. Levels are themed and named accordingly, as in the level of bone (1st), flesh (2nd), fire (3rd), etc. They're all comprised of a horizontal shooting part and a platforming section abridged by short captions with stage names or something about the story, which are hard to read due to the poor choice of fonts and colors. By the way, POOR is the word of order in this game, an experience that in these days should only be had by masochists or demented players looking for a reason to giggle.

How much pain can you take?
(courtesy of YouTube user DeimosComaBlack)

There are lots of things wrong with Robodemons, which either annoy or downright kill any sense of thrill a good video game is supposed to convey. One of them is the nature of the warrior's attack, a magical boomerang (button B) that disappears in thin air before returning to the character. You can't fire more than one boomerang at a time, which means you're basically a sitting duck if you miss the target and have to wait to shoot again. This is especially aggravating during some of the flying areas because lots of enemies tend to quickly sweep onto you. Unfortunately there are no power-ups or different weapon varieties at all during the quest to bring down evil king Kull... The player is doomed to only use that dreaded boomerang.

When you enter the platforming areas button A becomes active as the jump input. All action pieces are laid out so that you either need to find a key or destroy/collect all of the special entities in order to leave the room through a big door. In the process there might be a few powerful enemies to defeat and several smaller doors that serve as magical gateways that take you to different parts of the level. Everything is very simplistic and does not incur in any grinding besides learning how to deal with a few design problems, such as the hideous choice of colors in the second platforming area or the moving boards in the third stage draining your health even though there's no reason for it at all.

In order to make things bearable, each life comes with a health bar of five hearts. Unless you fall into a pit and lose a life instantly, this health bar takes some time to deplete and can be extended by taking extra hearts left behind by specific enemies within a level. By "extended" I mean that with the extra hearts you can stockpile lots of health. The only other item that appears in some of the flying areas is a small face that grants you an extra life.

Bone creatures amidst skulls and tombstones

Robodemons is ugly and generally awful to look at, but none of this crappiness is hinted at by the detailed descriptions of the instruction booklet. In a sense, it promises Castlevania but delivers Dark Castle. There is only one single song that plays from start to finish, the main character looks like an old bearded man with rheumatism and the enemy gallery follows the same disjointed animation standard. Expect to see skeletons, demons, flies, robots, zombies on fire, green pac-man lookalikes and even flying faucets - watch out for them at the start of the fourth stage, they're all very slow and give you lots of extra hearts. Later on the game even throws some beat'em up traits on you in the demon factory level, where you need to kill authentic robodemons and destroy demon breeding machines that look like fuse bombs.

The good news about this painful experience is that it's also a very short one. Some of the shmup parts are so short you'll be left wondering if something is wrong with the cartridge. Overall, the game will be over in a snap once you've come to grips with all of the annoyances in every level. A few tips: enemy shots can be blocked by your boomerangs; enemies never return once killed; whenever possible try to kill them in safety from behind walls or from different heights; brute force works if you have lives left and demons get cheaply aggressive (in the last stage).

The only way to see your score while playing is by presssing SELECT. The screen below shows mine just as I was about to dispatch Kull and save the Earth from his robodemons. Good riddance, demon lord, my mission is accomplished and I can move on to the next stinker!

Tuesday, September 15, 2015

Third in line in the history of Milestone arcade shooters, Karous also has the honor of being the last officially licensed release for the Sega Dreamcast in Japan, six years after the console’s sad demise. Coming to the home platform just a few months after its arcade birth, it points to a refinement in Milestone’s approach to design, in that gameplay is made less complicated than previous efforts Chaos Field and Radirgy. While based in elements originally presented in the latter, to the point where it’s feasible to consider it a spiritual sequel or a spin-off, Karous still uses cell-shaded graphics but eschews the abundance of color seen in Radirgy in favor of an almost monochromatic gray palette.

The word “karous” is the equivalent to “crows”. It’s also the name of the main character controlled by the player, which is nicely animated with an avian form and even a beak (easier to notice when you choose to play on a large TV or in TATE mode). How this fits into the sci-fi urban setting of the game is beyond me, given that all your foes are flying machinery with occasional large beasts that cover the screen with bullets. The several flashes of conceptual artwork that appear in between stages should hint at something about a story, but we’re not given any chance to figure out what’s going on. Other than that, a navigator lady that looks a lot like the girl from Radirgy displays a few messages in Japanese every once in a while.

I could say that one of the strongest assets of Karous is being the perfect gateway into the world of Milestone shooters, both in matters of difficulty and ease of grasp regarding gameplay. It's remarkably addictive, with no need to learn convoluted inputs as in Chaos Field or to decide between three different weapons as in Radirgy.

Feathers and steel

Configurable controls consist of shot, sword slash and DFS bomb activation. I assume DFS stands for Defense Force Shield or something similar, a bomb that looks like a skull and plays a pivotal role both for survival and scoring. Karous can also attack by shielding, and all it takes to activate the shield is ceasing to shoot/slash and waiting a very brief moment – the shield materializes and starts deflecting all bullets that hit it. While this mechanic is inherited from Radirgy, everything else in the gameplay of Karous takes a different route. Attacks are upgraded separately and are directly related to how much you use shot, sword and shield throughout the game, each with a power level that starts at 0 and tops at 100 experience points. For every 10 points weapons receive a boost in power, with the most important ones happening at 20 and 50 exp.

Each destroyed enemy or bullet generates pills that fill up the experience meters for each weapon, as well as charging the DFS blue gauge on the left of the screen. Every time a weapon is leveled up a color-coded circling animation can be noticed around the character: blue for shot, yellow for shield and green for sword. When the DFS bar is filled up it starts glowing and a smaller gray circle sinks into the character, meaning the player is ready to deploy it.

Correct and aggressive use of the DFS is the secret to everything in Karous. Leveling up faster, scoring higher, surviving bullet curtains. Leveling up faster happens because all upgrade pills get bigger when collected inside the DFS radius and all soaked bullets help to power up the shield. Scoring higher then comes naturally since all kills and bonus items are multiplied by your total power level, which consists of the sum of all weapon levels and is permanently displayed in bold red fonts on the top right corner of the screen. And naturally the more enemies you kill or bullets you deflect outside or inside the DFS the faster it recharges for subsequent use. It’s very fun to finally get the hang of it and be able to anticipate attacks while diving head on into the mayhem of DFS manipulation. This creates a very strange phenomenon, at least for me: in the pursuit for higher scores, the first half of the game ends up being harder than the second because weapons aren’t powered up enough to destroy everything without incurring in more dodging and consequently more risk. Get them all above level 50 and see how awesome and more comfortable things get. One example is the shield being capable of deflecting bullets back to their sources as damaging arches of doom.

Another important factor in the gameplay is the nature of icons and power-ups. Most of them appear in the form of a tiny blue triangle that gives you a few bonus points, which when slashed will grow bigger and even change to a completely different item. Special items can be a temporary auto shield (shield active while shooting/slashing), DFS instant recharge, extra level-up experience, partial or full extra life (rare) and a yellow triangle that turns all on-screen bullets into items (very, very rare). There’s also a specific carrier that will always release a level-up unit or a speed item, which come in random fashion but can be cycled with slashing so that you can take the desired one (blue level-up → green level-up → yellow level-up → speed-up → speed-down → blue level-up).

Intro + I only use the blue shot!
(courtesy of YouTube user King Arthur Pendragon)

Playing Karous leisurely is perfectly possible, but obviously a laid back approach will never result in higher scores. Upon starting a credit the player must choose between three game modes (Easy, Normal or Hard) that are progressively denser in bullet count. All bosses can be milked to some extent, but don’t take too long to kill them or they’ll time out and deny you lots of points. By the way, going out on a killing spree is the best way to level up faster because every big enemy or small enemy wave is only spawned after the current one has cleared the screen or been completely destroyed. Since every stage has a definite course, you can have more or less enemy waves at the end of a level depending on how aggressively you play. This means that the faster you move the better chances you have at scoring, therefore two or three speed-ups are absolutely necessary to cause more havoc even though it gets a little harder to micro-dodge. Score extends are granted at 50 and 200 million points across all game modes.

Initially slashing is by far the strongest attack, but once the shield reaches level 50 it also starts being utterly destructive (trust the power of the shield!). The only downside to the DFS one needs to worry about is its ability to suck every single item within its radius into Karous. Having a speed-down sucked in by accident is not only bad for maneuvering, but it also means one less upgrade point to a weapon and the total power level, so a little less points in the end. You can try to slash it out of the DFS area but it doesn’t work all the time.

By choosing Hard mode the player is entitled to fight a True Last Boss if (1) all secret Milestone icons are collected and (2) the 5th boss doesn’t time out. The Milestone logos are always located on the ground and must be unlocked with a specific weapon by targeting a secret area that glows when hit. Logos in stages 1 and 2 are unlocked with shot, stage 3 with the sword and stages 4 and 5 with shield. An interesting trait about Karous is that there are no ground targets except for the Milestone secret logos and the 3rd boss, almost as if Milestone had tried to mimic Alfa System’s approach on the Shikigami No Shiro series. There’s an overall soft nature to graphics and sounds, with a techno-inspired soundtrack that fits the game but isn’t on par with previous Milestone efforts.

Greed can be a bitch, that’s why in the end of my time with Karous I incurred in a little restartitis. I kept getting hit stupidly on the first level. The Dreamcast disc offers many tinkering options and proper TATE, the only thing that baffles me is that the save function only saves your option preferences, not high scores (memory card > data save is worthless). The game was re-released later in compilation discs for the Nintendo Wii and the Xbox 360, also receiving a 3D makeover for the Nintendo 3DS.

My best result on Hard mode is below, having beaten the TLB with a final power level of 238 experience points.